An Italian fertility doctor who helped a 62-year-old woman give birth has told a conference in Rome that he is ready to start cloning babies for infertile couples. A spokesman for Pope John Paul said that human cloning raised profoundly disturbing ethical issues. According to Dr Severino Antinori, a cloned baby could be created within the next two years by using pioneering techniques, which have already been successfully tested on animals. Over 600 patients have already signed up for the research programme, which will be supported by an unnamed Mediterranean country.
The technique involves taking cells from an infertile father and injecting them into an egg, which would then be placed in the mother’s uterus. Infertile parents would no longer have to rely on sperm donors and children would have the same physical characteristics as the father. No stranger to controversy, the Italian professor first hit the headlines when he helped a 62-year old woman have a baby eight years ago. Two years later, he assisted an unmarried 59-year old British woman to have twins.
